The words ‘cottage garden’ bring to mind warm summer days in England, where an afternoon spent outside, surrounded by a seemingly random profusion of climbing roses, colourful phlox, fragrant lavender and crab apple trees laden with fruit, is as inescapable an occurrence as getting caught in the rain.
Although cottage gardens are an English institution, born out of a need for a functional space that provided a family with food and medicine, they’ve made the transition to Canada with little adjustment. And although not all our regions have as ideal a climate as England for creating a cottage garden, the essential elements—an informal, relaxed feel, a lack of hard landscaping, an abundance of plants—are all easy to transplant. Most requisite cottage garden plants thrive here, too. Larkspur, snapdragons, thyme and lavender; clematis, pinks, poppies and columbine; sweet william, chamomile, shallots, runner beans and wild strawberries; and above all, masses of roses, are as close as your nearest garden centre.
So take up your trowel and take heart. Like herbologist Heather Bazakias’s exuberant oasis in Singhampton, Ontario, which is shown here, a cottage garden is not about regimented beds and borders of flowering plants, fertilized, divided and pruned into ruthless submission. It’s about preserving the spirit of a thriving, harmonious plot that contributes to your soul as well as to your table. Scatter a few of our choice flowers, throw in some herbs, a fruit tree, plus a bench, arbor or beehive, and a cottage garden is yours to enjoy.
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